In a recent report on new research from the Tuck School at Dartmouth, an article described encouraging test results that explain how a better understanding of the way consumers think or process information can help improve the chances for a new product success. Most of the 25,000 new products that are developed for the U.S. market each year fail, resulting in an incredible waste of talent, time and money. In researching consumers who respond differently to new product concepts, Professor Praveen Kopalle at Tuck discovered that a certain type of consumer will not only envision the usefulness of innovative products more clearly, but can also provide helpful feedback to make a concept more appealing. Professor Kopalle called this type “emergent consumers”.

The hypothesis was that the most receptive (“emergent”) consumer for new ideas is one who has a unique way of thinking, combining both experiential initially (e.g. intuitive, emotional, holistic and self learning) and then rational (e.g. goal directed, analytical, logical, and systemic) thinking – definitely not your “typical” consumer. In a web-based study of over 1,000 consumers selected randomly, consumers were segmented into four groups based on certain personality and attitudinal traits, including one that was defined as “high emergent” consumers. All consumers were asked to use an online bulletin board to critique six equally appealing concepts for a product that had originally failed in a general market test, and to offer suggestions on how these basic concepts could be improved. Then all six refined concepts were evaluated by the four consumer segments on 15 attributes. The concept developed by the “high emergent” group scored significantly higher than those refined by other, more “typical” consumers.

While this exercise may seem somewhat theoretical, it does underscore the importance of good research to probe and define target consumers on both an emotional and rational level. Another key observation is the versatile use of online research to effectively test multiple concepts among different consumer segments. Latin Pulse continually encourages its clients to dig deeper in research to better understand its target consumers, and whenever possible use its innovative online research techniques to explore several concepts.